Craft鈥檚 Ilya Levtov Never Learned To Code. He Built A Software Company Anyway.

Editor鈥檚 note: The following is the fourth profile in a series of articles about startup founders from non-technical backgrounds who have launched successful venture-backed companies. Read the previous interviews with founder here, founder here, and founder here.

By conventional Silicon Valley standards, had some of the credentials one might expect of a startup founder: , experience as a VC on Sand Hill Road, and time working inside a fast-growing venture-backed startup.

One thing he decidedly lacked was a technical background.

鈥淚’ve never written a line of code in my life,鈥� Levtov told SA国际传媒 News in an interview. Years later, after building , a 12-year-old San Francisco-based supply chain software company that he says now works with 35 federal agencies and generates double-digit millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue, that remains true: 鈥淎nd I still haven’t written a single line of code.鈥�

Over the years, Levtov raised $42 million in funding for Craft. His experience has given him a close-up view of both the disadvantages non-technical founders face, and the reasons Silicon Valley鈥檚 preference for technical founders may be too simplistic.

An unlikely route into tech

Ilya Levtov, founder and CEO of Craft. (Courtesy photo)

Levtov鈥檚 own route into technology was anything but direct. His family emigrated from the Soviet Union to England when he was a toddler, and with two musician parents, he began playing cello at age four. He later attended a specialist music school in London, studied at the Royal College of Music, and participated in a Columbia- exchange while earning an English literature degree from .

By graduation, Levtov had decided to keep music as a hobby and pursue business instead. He joined , later attended Stanford Business School, and eventually landed at , an ad-tech startup that grew from about 10 employees to roughly 200 during his time there.

鈥淚 was just totally bitten by the bug,鈥� he recalls. 鈥淎nd I said, 鈥楾his is what I want to do with my life. I want to build a company one day. Somehow, entrepreneurship is for me.鈥欌€�

Before becoming a founder, though, Levtov spent time on the other side of the table as a venture capitalist at . He later left venture for an operating role at video service provider , and after moving back to Europe, eventually worked at helping Silicon Valley startups including , , and establish distribution partnerships.

His eventual startup grew out of an unsuccessful attempt to build an enterprise social network.

As part of that project, Levtov鈥檚 team created company profiles by collecting information from corporate websites, job pages, management pages and other sources.

Those profiles began showing up prominently in searches, convincing him there might be a business there.

The disadvantage of not being technical

But unlike a technical founder, he could not simply build the product himself.

鈥淢y first coder was literally a $20 an hour Odesk or person,鈥� he said.

That dependence slowed everything down.

鈥淔or the non-technical founder, it’s just fundamentally a much longer time at the very beginning to get to something because a technical founder basically codes their idea on nights and weekends,鈥� he said.

Instead, Levtov had to hunt down developers, explain his vision, and try to determine whether the result would match it. Once he鈥檇 done those things, he then had to find the capital to pay for it.

Still, the business gained traction.

Its company profiles eventually appeared in 100 million search results per month and drew about 2.25 million visitors organically, according to Levtov.

鈥業 guess that means not me鈥�

When Levtov began raising venture funding in London in 2015 and 2016, he ran into another challenge familiar to non-technical founders: Investors preferred founders who could build the product themselves.

鈥淚 decidedly remember this clarity with which I found venture funds whose websites I go to and research. And what did they say? 鈥榃e support technical founders in doing this and that.鈥� And it really was just this moment [of realizing], 鈥榦h I guess that means not me, right?鈥� 鈥� he said.

Even so, Levtov does not describe himself as having been shut out of venture capital. He had Stanford and Venrock on his r茅sum茅 and eventually secured funding from in the U.K., and later after moving back to Silicon Valley.

And he believes the preference for technical founders has some logic behind it.

鈥淭hey’ve got a direct line between the business concept and the code in which it’s executed,鈥� Levtov said.

His own experience showed him how costly that gap could be. He said there were times he hired the wrong technical person and did not have enough expertise to recognize the problem quickly.

鈥淭hat is a real disadvantage: This inevitable disconnect, this gap between the non-technical person’s knowledge and, you know, the bare metal, as it were, or the most intrinsic innards of the software code by which this business product is going to live and breathe,鈥� Levtov said.

He believes those mistakes slowed the company鈥檚 growth.

Finding the business inside the product

But the company鈥檚 eventual breakthrough also illustrated the potential advantage of approaching technology from the business side.

Someone at contacted the company and pointed out that its data could help track changes across a sprawling supply chain. The system could pick up signals such as changes in hiring, executive departures and new product offerings.

Lockheed became its first enterprise customer. Then, in 2020, the reached out about using the product to monitor 300,000 companies in the defense industrial base. The company closed a five-year, $6.5 million deal 94 days later, according to Levtov.

鈥淲e figured out that our company is actually a supply chain company, and we haven’t looked back since then,鈥� he said.

Notably, those customers were not software developers asking for better developer tools. They were, noted Levtov, business users with business problems.

And this is where he believes his own background helped. A non-technical founder may not be able to evaluate code or engineering talent in a way that a technical founder can, he pointed out. But they may be stronger in areas such as understanding customers, managing people, fundraising and building relationships.

AI is further complicating that debate, since software can increasingly be built without traditional coding expertise. But Levtov stops short of arguing that technical founders no longer matter.

鈥淚t really just takes both. It takes both sides,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 think if you can have a technical founder and a non-technical founder, you’re probably in the ideal spot.鈥�

Technical founders may have an edge at the earliest stages, Levtov said. As companies scale, the balance can shift toward skills like hiring, selling, positioning and dealmaking.

At different points in a company鈥檚 life, he said, 鈥渋t’s really about the tech right now,鈥� while at others, 鈥渋t’s all about the dealmaking, or all about the positioning, or the marketing.鈥�

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